


Figure and Ground

by sterlinglee



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Datekou, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 06:59:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4050604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterlinglee/pseuds/sterlinglee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakunami Kousuke and the Iron Wall. He stands with them, loses with them, and keeps moving. Every season is someone’s last, and someone else’s first.</p><p>
  <em>He throws himself into his receives, narrowing his focus.  All eyes are on him when he keeps it from the ground and for a moment he is the center on which the game turns.  He can do this even on a court where the blocker is king.  Every wall is built from the ground up.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Figure and Ground

  
When Sakunami hands over his registration form, Datekou’s coach is only half looking at it. He can tell that Oiwake is sizing him up—in his first year of high school he stands at 164 centimeters plus that vital point one, and his breath is shaky and his hands are small.  
“Libero?” says Oiwake.

“Libero,” Sakunami tells him. He lets it sound like the full story. 

He’s been playing volleyball since his first year of junior high, and he hasn’t gotten much taller since then but oh, what he remembers—that’s worth something. Collecting bruises, skinning his knees, throwing himself to the ground and getting back up again, getting back up again. 

He was the same height as most of his teammates when he started, taller than a couple of them even, but their growth spurts all seemed to hit at the same time and then he was half a head shorter than people he used to look in the eye. That was a month that stank of finality. But then the coach switched him from wing spiker to libero and he took that chance for what it was, and held on.

“Good, good,” Oiwake says, surprising him. He crimps the form in half and points across the gym with it, to the loose pack of players already gathered. A couple of them have to be puching two meters. “The best defense is net to floor, all the way down. I’m looking forward to seeing what you can do.”

That’s the first day. And the weeks and months rush up on him, speeding towards the Inter-High. He starts eating lunch with this blasphemously tall setter who happens to be in his homeroom—Koganegawa has one volume setting and two gears, and he loves the game so much that sometimes Sakunami wants to hit him with a chair. When Sakunami stays late for cleanup, the manager, Nametsu, splits her allowance and raids the vending machine with him in the warm light of the streetlamps. He practices digs and falls, collects more bruises.

By the time he arrived at Datekou he was already used to the view from the back row. He can see so clearly how the center shifts now—from Moniwa, who chooses the ball’s path, to the spiker, and then, inevitably, to the block. Each of them stands out in relief when their time comes. 

And there comes a time for him too, even if he’s the only player on the team who isn’t within arm’s reach of two meters, the only one who throws himself towards the ground while the others jump, strike, reach high. 

It’s like this when they play Karasuno for the last time. It’s like this when he realizes, watching Karasuno’s #10 outpace Aone and Futakuchi, that they might lose. Koganegawa is the loudest voice in their warmup box but even his cheers seem far away. The crowding noise turns to static as he looks at Moniwa, who’s never seemed much like a wall, and sees something that has only ever emerged in shades before now.

All the third years share it: a restless, nameless resignation that intrudes on their play every time the future comes up in conversation. It comes from a time before Sakunami knew them, and a future where they will go their own ways. It’s hard to watch. It makes him cringe a little. It makes him proud.  
Moniwa raises his hands, palm up. “Don’t get overwhelmed,” he says. And Sakunami decides that maybe this is one way to be iron—not to win and win, but to face loss the same way you take victory.

He throws himself into his receives, narrowing his focus. All eyes are on him when he keeps it from the ground and for a moment _he_ is the center on which the game turns. He can do this even on a court where the blocker is king. Every wall is built from the ground up. 

He only realizes that he’s maybe grown a bit when they lose and it does not occur to him to doubt this fact. Being in the back row doesn’t spare him a view of the third years bending, bowing but not breaking—out of respect, he watches. They are rushed off the court rather quickly. The next game is about to begin.

There is something Oiwake told them on the first day, and at the time Sakunami had stifled a laugh when he saw Nametsu making a little yappy-mouth with her hand while the coach droned on. Parts of it come back to him as they pack their things up in the locker room. It was a long speech, but it can be boiled down to this.

Datekou is not what it once was, and not what it will be. They are here to work hard and support one another _(to be tempered, not to break, he thinks)_. They are here to forge something unique to them, something worthy and new. _Forge_ was the word Oiwake used, and he’s upset enough right now that it doesn’t even feel melodramatic. He shuts his locker gently, not wanting to break the silence in the cold room.

And the year moves again. “This new Iron Wall,” Oiwake says to them, once the round of half-sarcastic applause for Futakuchi has died down. “Think about what you want it to be.” 

He has some choice advice for Sakunami too, on the subject of Koganegawa. At first, the words _you’ll literally be steering him don’t sound too good,_ until a few days later, when Sakunami’s coming in to do his warmup and he finds Koganegawa already there. He’s practicing alone by the net. There are volleyballs all over the floor that someone is going to have to pick up, and Kogane is grinning to himself. Sakunami stands in the doorway, rocking on the balls of his feet. 

He remembers the way Kogane cheered when Moniwa made a rare daring move like a dump shot. He remembers the way the world realigned the first time he got his hands under a stray ball and returned it perfectly to the setter, the way the voices in the stands called his name.

“You might want to start picking these up before Nametsu-senpai gets here,” he says as he enters the gym. Koganegawa startles and then breaks into laughter.

“Hey!” he says. “You, uh, you offering to help?”

“When Coach called you a baby he wasn’t suggesting I actually be your mom,” Sakunami informs him, but he can’t keep a straight face. _You want to be the center of the world?_ he doesn’t say, because there’s no coming back from that kind of embarrassment. _I know what it’s like. I’ll put you there._

**Author's Note:**

> written for datekou week on tumblr (day 1, 1st years). who's with me on lowkey SUPER AMBITIOUS sakunami huh?


End file.
